Languages have different ways of making distinction and emphasis. Oligosemic problems may be rigorous. They are rigorous when they occur without contextual feature(s) to mark their specialized meaning. They are less rigorous when there is a semotactic marker in the context.

The first, second, fourth and fifth types abound in colloquial and artistic usage, in strongly culture-bound professions (hunting and fishing, agriculture, mining, folklore, arts and crafts) but also in the popular designations and subclassifications of plants and animals and in slang expressions. Among the translation techniques, it uses amplification and reduction, specification and neutralisation and reveals polysemic and oligosemic processes.

Instead, these contradictions illustrate a finer point about the didactic content of proverbs: namely, that they are oligosemic — having their meanings embedded in the culture of which they are a part.